“The definition of a good job, the meaning of work,” says Mike Rowe, Acton’s favorite blue-collar philosopher of work, “[is] the willingness to see what a lot of people might call a bad job and only see an opportunity.”

Rowe said jobs have been available since 2003, but Americans aren’t defining them as “good.” Meanwhile, employers are desperate for people willing to learn a “useful skill” and work hard. In a TED talk in 2008, Rowe also talked about the nature of hard work, and how its been unjustifiably degraded in society today.

BBC News is reporting that, beginning April 1, specially trained teams will be working in UK airports to help stem the tide of human trafficking victims. The British government says it want to make sure that “there is ‘no easy route into the UK for traffickers.'”

Home Office minister Karen Bradley said Border Force officers could be the ‘first authority figure in the UK to have contact with a potential victim of modern slavery.’

‘Their role is vital in identifying and protecting victims and ensuring there is no easy route into the UK for traffickers’, she said. ‘The new specialist teams will build on existing skills and joint working and extend that expertise around the country.’

The teams will be supported by the National Crime Agency [NCA], which will bring its child protection expertise in cases involving children.

One of my dreams is to meet the person responsible for introducing the charge to young adults to “go out there and make a difference.” Youth and young adults are pressured and challenged to go “make a difference” but making a difference has never been clearly defined or quantified anywhere. For a few years now I have refused to tell my students to “go change the world” or “go make a difference.” Do those phrases really mean anything?

In light of this, I was naturally confused by Neal Samudre’s article over at Relevant Magazine titled “6 Things Holding You Back From Making a Difference.” The six things include comfort, entitlement, apathy, money, time, and yourself. That is, we are often too comfortable with our current circumstances. We often feel like we deserve to have whatever we desire. We lose interest in the things that matter outside of ourselves. We often reduce life to making money. We waste a lot of time. And, finally, we talk ourselves out of getting personally involved in important issues.

Ok, great. I get that. In fact, these are all part of the human condition that keeps us from doing all the regular things Jesus commands, like loving God and loving neighbor. My suspicion, however, is that the main “thing” holding young people back from “making a difference” is that they are being sent out on a mission that has no real meaning or a mission that is solely defined by one’s individual, and likely narcissistic, interpretation.

Eric Prince, founder and former CEO of Blackwater Inc., speaks at the Acton Institute

On Tuesday night, the Acton Institute welcomed Erik Prince to the Mark Murray Auditorium in the Acton Building in Grand Rapids, Michgan. Prince, a west Michigan native, is the founder and former CEO of Blackwater, Inc., the private security firm that became the subject of a great deal of controversy during the Iraq War, and remains so to this day.

Prince’s address shared the title of his book: Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror. He related the story of why he founded Blackwater Inc., how the company grew in response to various national and world events, the role the company played in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-9/11 conflicts, and the public excoriation that both he and his company were subject to at the hands of a hostile press and Congressional investigators after the public soured on the Iraq war effort.

A small group of protestors greeted Prince’s arrival at Acton.

Naturally, Prince’s presence at Acton sparked outrage in the local leftist community, as Prince is widely assumed to be a “war criminal” throughout the leftist blogosphere. This led to calls for protest, which were answered by around ten to twelve individuals who stood at the corner of Fulton Street and Sheldon Avenue, peacefully holding their signs. By my observation, it appeared that about 60 percent of the signs were intended to either denounce Prince as a “war criminal” or Acton for even allowing him to speak, with the other 40 percent calling for various leftist economic reforms. Here’s a rather amusing account of the event from a leftist perspective, which notes that at some point the protestors hauled out a bullhorn, but were asked discontinue use of it by the Grand Rapids Police. A more balanced account of the event appears in the Grand Rapids Press.

In the end, this type of protest is the reason why Prince wrote his book, and the reason why he is now speaking out about his experiences. He has largely been tried and convicted in the international court of the leftist blogosphere and punditocracy, and has had relatively little opportunity to share his side of the story. Even then-Senator Barack Obama acknowledged that “Blackwater is getting a bad rap” during a 2008 campaign related trip to Afghanistan, a trip on which his personal security was provided by – you guessed it – Blackwater.

With all this in mind, your best bet is to hear the man out for yourself. The video of Prince’s address and the Q and A that followed is posted below. For a more in-depth examination of the situation, you’d do well to read his book.

We read the same Bible and follow the same Jesus. We go to the same churches and even agree on the same social issues. So why then do liberal and conservative evangelicals tend to disagree so often about economic issues?

To explore that question I recently wrote a series of posts explaining “What Liberal Evangelicals Should Know About the Economic Views of Conservative Evangelicals.” The posts covered 12 principles that generally drive the thinking of conservative evangelicals when it comes to economics:

1. Good intentions are often trumped by unintended consequences.
2. Our current economic and historical context must be taken into account when applying Biblical principles
3. To exploit the poor, the rich need the help of the government.
4. We love economic growth because we love babies.
5. The economy is not a zero sum game.
6. Inequality and poverty in America is more often a matter of personal choice than structural injustice.
7. The best way to compensate for structural injustice is to increase individual freedom.
8. Saddling future generations with crippling debt is immoral.
9. Social mobility — specifically getting people out of poverty — is infinitely more important than income inequality.
10. Jobs that lead to human flourishing are the most important part of a moral economy.
11. Free markets are information systems designed for virtuous people
12. Free markets are the best way to serve free people.

To make it easier to read, I’ve compiled the entire series into a single essay, which can be downloaded in PDF or text format here.

It’s not uncommon for advocates of the “high and impregnable wall” misunderstanding of the metaphor to suggest that Jefferson’s own policies were incompatible with his own principles (e.g., endorsement of federal funds to build churches, support of Christian missionaries among the Native Americans, etc.).

What they need most, then, is job creation. The Brookings study finds that cities with high inequality are better at producing wealth–and for good reason. The job market in such cities tends more toward growth industries.

In a recent column for USA Today, Kirsten Powers uses some legislation in the Kansas state legislature as a foray for arguing that, for many Christians, the supposed fight for religious liberty is really just a fight for the “legal right to discriminate.” Pointing to recent efforts to protect a florist, a baker, and a photographer from being sued for their beliefs about marriage, Powers argues that these amount to the homosexual equivalent of Jim Crow laws.

Powers, herself a Christian, reminds us that Jesus calls us “to be servants to all,” which is, of course, correct. Yet, as many have already observed, those involved in these lawsuits have no qualms with serving gay customers. Their conflict, rather, is with the particular ends that such services would support. As Andrew Walker explains at First Things: “What’s at stake in this context is when individuals who provide material and artistic craft for weddings are then forced to take their talents and their creative abilities and use them for purposes that go against their consciences.”

Setting aside any differences over sexual ethics or the particular legislation at hand, it’s worth noting how Powers so decidedly divorces work from religion, and in turn, work from ethics. Are we really to believe that the ends of our economic activity are of no consequence?

Powers writes that most of those planning a wedding would be shocked to learn that their vendors and suppliers had some kind of religious principle or transcendent ethic driving their efforts. “Most people think they just hired a vendor to provide a service,” she writes. “It’s not clear why some Christian vendors are so confused about their role here.” Reinforcing this view, megachurch pastor Andy Stanley is quoted, advising Christians to “leave Jesus out of it” when it comes to discerning the shape of their economic output. Later, in a tweet responding to her critics, Powers still fails to see it. “Of all the pushback I’ve gotten on my column,” she writes, “not one person has explained when Jesus taught that baking a cake is an affirmation of anything.” (more…)